At its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, Apple has announced the immediate arrival of iOS 6 beta, the imminent release of OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, and a refresh of the MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. But that’s not all! Apple surprised us all by announcing a brand new laptop: a next-generation 15-inch MacBook Pro, with a Retina display. At two hours long, this was possibly Apple’s juiciest keynote ever — there’s a lot to cover!

Hardware

The “next-generation” MacBook Pro is 0.71-inches (1.8cm) thick, weighs 4.46 pounds (2kg) — and has a 220 PPI, 2880×1800 15-inch Retina display. The display, apparently, is a wonder to behold, with better contrast, deeper blacks, and a big reduction in glossy glare. Internally, there’s an Ivy Bridge processor (up to 2.7GHz/3.7GHz Turbo), support for 16GB of RAM, and a Kepler-based Nvidia GPU. It can be equipped with flash SSD storage up to 768GB, and there’s SD, USB 3.0, Thunderbolt, and HDMI (an Apple first) for expansion. Apparently, though I struggle to believe it, the new MBP will still have a battery life of 7 hours.

The starting configuration of the new MBP will cost $2200, have a 2.3GHz Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, the GeForce GT 650M, 256GB of SSD storage. It ships today (if there is any stock left by the time you read this story). We’ll no doubt have a lot more to say about the MBP’s Retina display, but just so you’re aware: 220 PPI at 15 inches perfectly jives with our recent story about high-resolution displays. Whether other OEMs — which lack the huge margins and supply chain that Apple commands — will be able to follow suit remains to be seen.

Coming back down to earth… the 15-inch MacBook Air has been updated to Ivy Bridge, with support for Core i7 processors up to 2GHz (Turbo Boost to 3.2GHz) and 8GB of RAM. It looks like the 13-inch MBA is limited to Core i5, and 4GB of RAM. The new MacBook Airs will be equipped with a pair of USB 3.0 ports, and the internal SSD will be available in sizes up to 512GB. With Ivy Bridge, the integrated GPU gets bumped up to the Intel HD 4000, which should boost graphics performance of the new MBP by 50% or so.

The old, non-Retina MacBook Pro has received a similar refresh: Ivy Bridge (up to 2.7GHz), up to 8GB of 1600MHz memory, USB 3.0, and Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 1GB (on the 15-inch model; 13-inch is stuck with the Intel HD 4000). It sounds like we’re stuck with two distinctly different MacBook Pros, but they both have the same name; kind of like the iPad 2, and “the new iPad” (3).

iOS

Moving onto the smartphone and tablet side of things: Despite the rather insane amount of press coverage it has received, the biggest new feature in iOS 6 isn’t Apple’s home-grown Maps app (which replaces Google’s offering) — it’s Facebook integration. Photos, Safari, and Maps now have native Facebook integration, just like Twitter. There is a public API that iOS app developers can use. The iTunes Store will have “Like” buttons. Birthdays and contact details will automatically hop over from Facebook to your phone (and presumably to your Mac, via iCloud). Siri can post to Facebook.

As expected, Siri has been updated. She can now handle sports-related queries (baseball and basketball were demoed), Yelp and OpenTable, and movies. Siri can now also launch apps. The image below apparently shows all of Siri’s capabilities. The “Eyes free” feature refers to Apple working with car manufacturers to add a Siri button to the steering wheel — much like volume or infotainment controls.

iOS 6 also debuts a new phone dialer app, which lets you decline calls with an SMS — and lets you set up a reminder, so you call the person back later. Apparently you can set up a “geo-fence,” which presumably reminds you to call someone as you’re leaving the office/house, or something along those lines.

After two years of being WiFi-only, iOS 6 will finally allow FaceTime video calls to operate over cellular networks. It seems like Apple will also allow you to merge your phone number and Apple ID, so if someone calls your phone, you can pick it up on your iPad or Mac.

Photo Stream, which provides instant syncing of your images to other devices via iCloud, can now be shared with other people. There’s a commenting platform built in, too. It’s probably easier to just use Facebook, though.

There’s a new app, called Passbook, which allows companies to send passes (Starbucks vouchers, United Airlines boarding passes, Amtrak tickets) to your phone. When you need to use a pass, just open the app, click the right tab, and a QR code appears. Changes can be pushed to Passbook; if your gate or boarding time changes, the virtual pass updates.

And finally, we have the new Maps app. Apple is apparently doing all of the cartography itself, starting from scratch. 100 million local points of interest/listings have already been added. There’s Yelp integration, traffic updates (from real-time, crowdsourced data), and turn-by-turn navigation. Siri is integrated, of course.

Apple’s Maps app also includes Flyover, which allows you to… fly over… cities all over the world. Even with Google’s recent Maps updates, Apple’s offering still sounds very compelling — not bad, for a first effort.

The developer beta of iOS 6 will be immediately available to download, with the final release coming in the fall (probably coinciding with the iPhone 5). The iPhone 3GS/4/4S, iPad 2/3, and iPod touch (4th gen and later) will be eligible for the upgrade. iPad 1 owners will unfortunately be left out (though I’m not sure why; it’s newer than the 3GS).

Mountain Lion

There are over 200 new features in Mountain Lion, apparently, with a lot of these (unsurprisingly) revolving around further iCloud integration. One of the coolest features seems to be instant syncing of Pages between OS X and iOS. Reminders, a new app, supports multi-touch gestures. Messages are now synced between desktop and mobile.

Mountain Lion also now has dictation — presumably powered by Siri and requiring an internet connection (though Apple didn’t provide many details). Safari has been updated with a faster JavaScript engine, an address box that looks a lot like the Chrome omnibox, and iCloud-syncing tabs. Rather than run you through the entire keynote, though, it’s probably easier if you just read our detailed preview, or hit up the Mountain Lion website.

Mountain Lion, which was first seeded to developers in February, will be released in the next month or so, and cost $20.

Other news

In other news, here’s some other interesting tidbits that emerged from Tim Cook’s keynote: There are now over 400 million App Store accounts (the largest number of credit card numbers on file, anywhere on the internet); There are now 650,000 apps (225,000 specifically for the iPad); and 30 billion App Store downloads to date (with $5 billion paid to developers). OS X is now up to 60 million users (a huge growth spurt over a few years ago).

Through the end of March, Apple had sold 365 million iOS devices, and 80% of Apple’s mobile users are running the latest version (iOS 5). Only 7% of Android devices run Ice Cream Sandwich, which was released around the same time as iOS 5. 1 billion iMessages are sent every day — and 10 billion tweets are sent per day from iOS 5 devices, apparently.

Tagged In

Nice to see Apple adding HDMI and USB3.0. Should make traveling & connecting to projectors & other peripherals a lot easier.

Michael Garrett

Weren’t we just talking about how desktop monitor’s resolutions have been frozen and then Apple unveils this?!
Some days we can hate on Apple, but not today.

http://www.cardinalphoto.com David Cardinal

I’ll be curious how they handle the font/application sizing. On the Windows side, I just got a Dell with gorgeous 15.4″ 1920×1080 screen, but am having trouble finding the right combination of Windows DPI, browser zoom, etc., settings for the various ways I use it. I’m guessing Apple has thought that through a lot more thoroughly!

Michael Garrett

I would think they’ve done extensive testing on various applications to anticipate any user complaints before launch. With that high of a resolution on that small of a screen, I would wonder if third party applications would look a little insane after first installing them (e.g microscopic fonts, buttons groups turned into button islands, etc).

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

I suspect they’ll just use straight up pixel-quadrupling, like on the iPad 2/3. 2880×1800 allows for perfect zoom on 1440×900 (4 pixels represent 1 pixel). For stuff that hasn’t been updated to work with the huge display, anyway.

VirtualMark

The new macbook pro certainly looks beautiful. I’d love to buy one but i just checked the uk price – £1800 for the 256gb 2.3ghz and £2300 for the 512gb 2.6ghz version. Both have 8gb ram, retina display ect.

I work with audio, i need a fair amount of storage so 256 wouldn’t be enough. But at £2300, its certainly something i’d have to think carefully about if i were to buy one. I could get a serious pc laptop for half that price that’d do everything i need and more.

Apple need to sort their prices out, that’s a lot of money for a laptop. Fanboys will probably rush to buy them, but i’d imagine a lot of people will be in the same position i’m in – trying to decide if its worth dropping £2300 on.

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

Yeah… standard UK gadget tax :( I ended up buying my last laptop in the US — it’s just SO much cheaper there. It’s almost pound-price-in-dollars — i.e., almost 50% cheaper. Insane!

If you do audio work, I would guess that you don’t need a Retina display :P

VirtualMark

A higher resolution would be useful but i could probably get by without it.

Is there any news on the brightness of the retina display? I think i read here that the higher resolutions can make the display dimmer or require more power?

http://www.mrseb.co.uk/ Sebastian Anthony

They certainly require more power to backlight properly (which makes me marvel at the 7-hour run time…) Apple says the display is beautiful — that’s all we have to go on at the moment.

http://society50.com wmac

One needs to struggle harder in order to be of the chosen ones! (who can use the fruit brand).

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1223563048 Angel Ham

I wouldn’t be surprised if 80% of the laptop’s weight is gonna be the battery if they claim it’s going to last that much.

J. Andrew Lanz-O’Brien

As much as I’d never buy an Apple product (being a power user and Linux guy), I really am glad they’re around to drive the increase in display resolution. First on cell phones, then on tablets, and now on laptops. It seems the rest of the industry has its head firmly up its ass, since my current 1920×1200 widescreen is a downgrade from my old CRT. I’ve been hoping for a resolution increase for a good 7-ish years now.

shaurz

Who manufactures the Macbook display? Hope to see that in other manufacturers’ products soon.

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